Dive Brief:
- Salt Lake City, Miami, and Orlando, FL, make up the top three cities for millennials, according to a report by Realtor.com.
- Seattle, Houston, Los Angeles, Buffalo, NY, Albany, NY, San Francisco and San Jose, CA, rounded out the list of the site's top cities for millennials. To compile the list, Realtor.com looked at the country's 60 largest markets and compared the number of site visits from millennials to the national average.
- The report found that extensive job growth in Orlando, Seattle and Miami, along with the affordability of places like Albany and Buffalo, were the main draws for the demographic.
Dive Insight:
Realtor.com noted that the top markets in the report already have a significant millennial population — which means there is significant potential for a growing share of millennial homebuyers. Millennials, in turn, now make up the largest living generation in the U.S. and are set to peak in 2036, when the population is expected to reach 81.1 million.
As millennials age, their market share as first-time buyers is growing. First-time buyers, many of whom are millennials, made up 35% of home sales in 2016, according to the National Association of Realtors. While larger U.S. cities like Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco — with booming tech industry growth and job prospects to go with it — cracked Realtor.com's list, the addition of places like Houston, Buffalo and Albany show a departure from previous trends of millennials moving to the nation's largest metro areas.
Part of the reasoning behind this movement could stem from "renter fatigue" driving the segment into the homeownership market. Recent research by PulteGroup showed that nine out of 10 "affluent" millennials surveyed in metros in which the company is operating said they wanted to own a home — with half of them already doing so. In a separate Meyers Research survey of 1,000 millennials in 48 states, 55% said they planned to purchase a home in the next five years, while 30% said they expected to own a home within three years.